Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Peas!

Sugar Snap or Snow Peas with Lemon Herb Butter

There
is nothing quite so graceful as trellised pea plants in full swing. And
nothing quite so tasteful as a crunchy sugar snap pea eaten straight
off the vine. And nothing that so captures the essence of spring as
peasâ€”all kinds of peas.
Peas love cool, wet weather, and so are often only in season for a
few weeks. Thatâ€™s when youâ€™ll find local farmers bringing in the
irresistible sugar snap pea, the Chinese or snow pea, and the good old
fashioned shell (or English) peas.

Snow Peas Healthy and Cosmopolitan

Snow peas are long, thin, nearly flat pea pods, with teensy
proto-peas inside. But youâ€™re not after the peas; itâ€™s the tender
pod itself youâ€™ll love. Traditionally found in Chinese and other Asian
cuisines, they now appear in all sorts of dishes from salads to pastas
to stir-fries.
Some say the name snow pea comes from the slight whitish tint
reflected from the pods in bright sunlight. Others say it's because they
are a cool weather cropâ€”best in the early spring or late fall, when
they just might be covered with light frost or even snow. But no matter
the name, or where it comes from, snow peas are sweet and crisp and
deliciousâ€”and an excellent source of fiber, iron, potassium, and
vitamins A and C. Snow peas are also among the most venerable of
vegetables, with evidence of their cultivation going back more than
12,000 years along the Thai-Burma border.

Sweet Sugar Snap Back Story

Way on the other end of the pea timeline, one of the newest pea
cultivars is the sugar snap pea. Calvin Lamborn of Twin Falls, Idaho
began crossing snow peas with shell peas in the 1960s. He was going
after a pea that would have the edible, non-fibrous pod of the snow pea,
plus the full-size interior peas of English peas. His hybrid was
finally perfected in 1979, and has become a favorite of gardeners and
market farmers ever since.
Both the pod and the peas are plump, succulent, and sweetly irresistible. The French call them mange-tout,
which tells you what to do, "eat the whole thing,â€ preferably on the
way home from market for maximum nutrition and enjoyment. As with all
legumes, peas host beneficial bacteria in their root nodules, which make
nitrogen in the air available as a fertilizer in the soil for
themselves and whatever crop is planted there next. They are one of the
true heroes of our fields and tablesâ€”so enjoy!

Quick Snow Peas with Lemon Herb Butter

Fresh peas cook really fast, so keep an eye on them, and take them off the heat as soon as they turn bright green.